background
Our project will often hold some activities, mainly providing some course resources, live video for users to watch, and calling on users to submit some works.
Later, the product manager wanted to add the function of “points exchange” to the activity. For example, users can get corresponding points for signing up for events, watching live broadcasts, submitting works, inviting other users to participate, etc. When the campaign reaches a certain stage, a “points redemption” function can be turned on, allowing users to redeem prizes.
Because our product manager is only responsible for the demand side, not the product, we have to develop the business model. The following is my thinking and understanding of “points exchange”.
The core problem
What can users do in the “points exchange”?
There are only two things: earning points, spending points; The user’s two behaviors will affect the user’s state: the number of points held. As shown below:
As you can see from the graph, the user has only one “state” at all times: the number of points currently held. Therefore, the core issue of “point exchange” is to ensure the accuracy of users’ points. This is also the user when obtaining points, the most concerned about a problem. No matter how many ways to get and spend points, the most important requirement is only one: to ensure the accuracy of user points.
After determining the core problem, let’s look at how to ensure the accuracy of the user’s integral state.
Since the user’s points status changes every time they earn or spend points, the simplest way to ensure that the status is accurate is to record every time they earn or spend points. Each record corresponds to a state change, and the integral record is a dynamic process connected in series to the integral state. As shown below:
So far, we can know that the core problem of “point exchange” is “how to ensure the accuracy of user’s point status”, which can be divided into two sub-problems: the user’s point value in a static state and the user’s point record.
Support problem
In the first two problems, the “resting point state” is “the point value held by the user at a certain moment”, and “point record” is “the record of the user obtaining and spending points”. Obviously, the former depends only on the latter, so what does the latter depend on? In other words, how is the value of “earned points, paid points” determined in each score record?
Obviously, “points redemption” has a series of “points rules”, such as 10 points for each user invited to an event, 5 points for each live video watched, and so on. Therefore, the integral record relies on the integral rule, which supports the integral record, as shown in the following figure:
So what is the correspondence between the integral record and the integral rule?
It can be intuitively concluded that each integral record uniquely corresponds to a certain integral rule, and it is impossible for one integral record to correspond to two rules. If so, the two integral rules should be combined into one rule, as shown in the following figure:
Because users have two behaviors of “gaining points and spending points” in “point exchange”, the points rules can be divided into: gaining points rules and spending points rules. The former includes “inviting users, watching live broadcast and submitting works”, etc., while the latter includes “exchanging prizes and giving points to others”, etc. Then, the points rules can be divided into two subcategories: the rules for obtaining points and the rules for disbursing points, as shown in the figure below:
Here, ask the question: are there more rules to get or rules to spend?
Before answering this question, let’s answer the pre-question: what is the problem to be solved by introducing “points exchange” in activities? In other words, what is the purpose of introducing “points redemption”?
The purpose of introducing “point exchange” is to attract users to use our products more, so it is natural to expect users to experience more functions. Therefore, the rules for obtaining points should be more than the rules for spending, so that users can experience more functions. Otherwise, users will be constantly consuming points.
Therefore, there are more acquisition rules than expenditure rules.
Second question, why else should the spending rule be less than the acquisition rule?
One is to control costs, and the other is to guide users to spend as little as possible (such as points exchange), so that users can have a good experience.
The two rules form a funnel like this, which is the same as the number of points earned and the number of points paid:
The key problem
As we know from the above, “point exchange” should have rules for gaining points and spending points. When “point exchange” is introduced in an activity, how should we create and manage rules?
Common acquisition rules and expenditure rules include: inviting users to get X points, submitting works to get X points, signing up for activities to get X points, exchanging for a prize to spend X points, etc. It can be seen that both acquisition rules and expenditure rules can be mapped into the mode of “behavior + resources + details”. “Details” refers to additional constraints on rules, such as inviting 50 users to get x extra points or inviting 50 users to get X points. “details” can be set according to business requirements.
Now that we know that rules are a combination of actions + resources + details, the previous problem of “creating and managing rules” becomes the following problem:
When introducing “points exchange” in an activity, how to map “actions, resources, details” in an activity to rules?
First of all, we need to determine how many resources there are in the activity, such as signing up, inviting users to participate in the activity is to increase the resource of “participants”, submitting works is to increase the resource of “entries”, liking works is to increase the resource of “likes” and so on.
Second, we need to identify the behaviors and details of each resource that can be combined, that can invite users but not like them, that can submit, like, forward works but not invite works, and so on.
Therefore, before introducing “point exchange” into activities, the most critical issue is to determine the scope of resources in activities and the behavior scope of resource matching. Only by defining the scope of resources and behaviors first can reasonable points rules be formulated.
At this point, user integration, integration rules and active resources form a three-layer ring structure as shown in the following figure:
Because the resource is located in the middle of the activity, so that when we want to introduce “points” in the activity, the first is to divide resources and behavior, and then the integral rules, the final user to get points, it is a right step, including “activity resources, integral rule” is to support “the user points”.
At this point, we have basically sorted out some problems and concepts in “points redemption”, which leads to the following questions:
1. Expenditure points are generally “exchanged for prizes”. According to our previous introduction, the points rule is based on “activity resources”.
According to the previous introduction, the resources in the points rule belong to the activity, so the prize should also belong to the activity.
This seems to be against common sense. Generally speaking, we would say, “Add a point exchange in the activity, and the prize can be exchanged for XXX”, which seems to belong to “point exchange”. If we follow the ring structure diagram above, we should change it to say, “There are some prizes XXX to be given to users in the activity, and users need to exchange them with points. The rules for obtaining points and exchanging prizes are…. Prizes and prizes then become resources for the campaign.
2. After modifying the rules, do I need to modify the existing score records?
After the rule is modified, it takes effect only for the later integral record, but not for the previous integral record. The previous integral record cannot be modified. Because the integral record corresponds to the change process of using the integral state, the core problem for users and us is to ensure the accuracy of the integral state. If the historical integral record is modified, the cognition of users and us on the integral state will be inconsistent.
In a special case where a rule change increases the user’s score, it is best to create a new rule to earn points, such as adding points to a specified user, rather than modifying the historical score record.
Summary and Prospect
In the previous introduction, we organize the activities of the introduction of problems should be considered when “points”, the core of the goal is to maintain the accuracy of user integral, activities and resources integration rules are used to support to achieve this goal, the key and the difficulty lies in: resources and behavior of combing activity, mapping rules for integral.
We need to know that the above problems will only occur when the “point exchange” is introduced. If the “point exchange” is not introduced, then the point rules and user points will not exist, but the activity resources will still exist, because the activity resources belong to the activity, not the “point exchange”. This means that we can do more based on “event resources”, such as raffles, voting and so on.” “Point exchange” is valuable only when it is introduced, and what is really valuable is the activity resources. Therefore, from the perspective of “activities”, the introduction of “point exchange” is only to attract more users to participate in activities and enrich the resources of activities.
The above content is just my thinking and understanding in the work as a developer, not necessarily correct, just for reference.